It is estimated that a significant majority of residents living in long-term care facilities suffer from some degree of hearing loss, and many of these residents use hearing aids on a daily basis. In nursing home environments, the loss of hearing aids is a common and expensive problem, and it is particularly severe in nursing home units that provide care for residents suffering from dementia and other cognitive impairments. Often, hearing aids are accidentally thrown into the garbage by residents or staff, inadvertently removed with clothing going to the laundry, left in bedsheets, or simply misplaced in dressers and closets. The loss of hearing aids not only incurs a high cost of replacement, often in the thousands of dollars, but it also adversely affects resident quality of life, and consumes a lot of staff time spent looking for missing hearing aids, processing claims, and resolving disputes with residents' families.
Today, the problem of hearing aid loss persists in these facilities without an effective, practical solution. Therefore, a technological solution that can prevent hearing aid loss and help find misplaced hearing aids is strongly desired by all types of long-term senior care facilities.
Hearing aids are available in various sizes and form factors. They can be classified based on their position with respect to the ear of the wearer. The most common styles in use today are behind-the-ear (BTE), in-the-ear (ITE), and in-the-canal (ITC) hearing aids.
Several hearing aid manufacturers provide string-based retainers (sometimes referred to as “oto-clips”) for use with hearing aids. One end of the oto-clip attaches to the hearing aid and the other end is attached to the clothing of the hearing aid wearer. These devices are available from commercial retailers such as Westone Labs, Harris Communications and Sound Clarity, among others. Other types of mechanical retainers have also been disclosed.
Various types of hearing aid retainers have been previously disclosed. US20070217641A1 discloses a retainer in the form of a flexible sleeve that wraps around the hearing aid and a flexible cord that connects the sleeve to the clothing of the wearer. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,881,616 and 4,702,345 disclose a sleeve-like retainer with a cord that wraps around the ear of the wearer. US 20130121519 A1 discloses another retainer for behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids in the form of a cord that wraps around the ear of the wearer. US 20130101148 A1 discloses a retainer for BTE hearing aids in the form of a battery compartment connected to a retainer accessory that fits under the ear of the wearer. US 20060251280 A1 discloses a retainer in the form of a cord that connects to a hook on the hearing aid wherein the cord can be worn around the neck of the wearer.
In related prior art, U.S. Pat. No. 5,327,499 describes a safety device in the form of a small chain, one end of which attaches to the hearing aid and the other end to an earring or other such device worn by the wearer. US 20020029438A1 discloses a hearing aid strap that is intended to prevent the hearing aid from accidentally falling out of the ear while the wearer is physically active. In a similar vein, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,918,757 and 3,327,807 disclose retainers in the form of headbands and headsets.
While these retainers, to some degree, help in keeping hearing aids in place on the wearer and prevent them from falling to the floor and being damaged, they fail to provide protection against hearing aids being permanently lost after they get misplaced, thrown in the garbage, or left in clothing in long-term care environments.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a technology for the automated remote identification of objects. A typical RFID system consists of RFID tags that are attached to objects of interest and RFID readers that remotely read the information contained in the tags. Today, RFID technology has widespread applications in areas such as inventory management, asset tracking, access control, and payment systems.
Various enterprises use RFID technology for tracking assets and equipment within facility premises. Such systems typically consist of RFID readers deployed throughout the facility and RFID tags attached to assets that need to be tracked. The main motivation behind using such systems is to prevent loss and theft of certain assets and reduce the time required to locate them.
The use of RFID technology in conjunction with hearing aids for various applications, including loss detection and prevention, has been previously explored. U.S. Pat. No. 8,189,835B2 describes a loss detection system for hearing aids consisting of an RF transmitter in the hearing aid that continuously transmits a signal to a receiver device worn on the body of the wearer. If the receiver detects an absence of this signal, it alerts the wearer to possible loss of the hearing aid. US 20130243228A1 discloses a hearing aid detection system comprised of a near-field communication (NFC) tag embedded within the hearing aid and a detection unit capable of communicating with this NFC tag at close range (four inches).
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,721,783, 8,094,848B1, and 8,199,946B2, and Patent Applications No. US20130343586A1 and WO2010108492A1 disclose various systems based on RF communication involving a transponder-receiver pair, one of which is embedded within the hearing aid. These systems enable data communication between an external device and the hearing aid to enable various functions, including the modification of hearing aid amplification, adaptation of a hearing aid to its environment, and the use of a mobile phone in conjunction with the hearing aid. All of these systems use near-field communication, which limits the communication distance between the transponder and receiver to around four inches or less.
RFID technology has been widely used as a solution for asset loss and misplacement. The tags used for such systems can either be active, wherein the tag itself transmits a radio signal that is detected by a reader, or passive, wherein a tag gets energized by the signal transmitted by a reader and communicates by reflecting part of the signal back to the reader. The read range of the tags varies from 6 to 15 feet in the case of passive tags, to more than 30 feet in case of active tags. However, given the small size and customized shape of hearing aids, these commercial tags cannot be directly attached to or embedded into hearing aids.
In order for an RFID system to be used for preventing the loss of hearing aids in the long-term care facility environments described earlier, it is essential that the RFID tag designed for the hearing aid can be detected by an RFID reader at a long distance (10 feet or more). This communication distance is essential to the viability of the solution. Furthermore, the designed RFID tag should not affect the fit, feel, battery life, or performance of the hearing aid. It should also not interfere with the functioning of the sound processing and wireless communication devices involved in the normal operation of the hearing aid.
It is the objective of this invention to overcome these barriers and provide an RFID-equipped retainer for hearing aids that can form the basis of an RFID loss prevention system for nursing home and assisted living facility environments, and for hospital and residential settings as well.